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How to buy XOs in quantity

We recently posted a wiki page summarizing XO prices (roughly $185-$205 by quantity), and how to get XOs for your own deployment: Buying XOs. The minimum order is 1,000, with occasional exceptions made for orders as small as 100.

In addition to our national partnerships, OLPC regularly sells XOs to groups all over the world who are running pilot programs in their district or community. While we do not often sell in quantities of less than a thousand laptops, exceptions are made for programs that have planned for a successful deployment. (And we feature some of the best-plannedgrassrootsprograms here on our blog!)

For groups working in war-torn or post-conflict regions, we may also be in discussions with aid groups who could help support a program. Feel free to get in touch with us if you are planning a sizeable project in these regions. For more information or to place an order, email us at countries@laptop.org.

I am a parent of two kids living in Falls chrch virginia usa and wanted to purchase OLPC laptops for my kids and I am a great believer on the success of OLPC and its principles. I wanted to buy these laptops for my kids and empower myself so that I would promote it based on my experience to people live here and in Ethiopia to set up a project

I am currently a student at the University of Texas in Arlington. One of my courses is engaged in a service learning project with Promise Worldwide (promiseworldwide.org), where we will be reading books to school children, and I and my classmates are looking forward to fundraising for their cause. We are wondering if it’s possible to use our fundraising money to purchase these laptops to donate to children in Calcutta, India, to the specific school that we are helping via Promise Worldwide.

Please get back to me with information on if this is possible, and if so, the steps involved in the process.

Yes of course you can donate them. Remember: just “throwing” a bunch of laptops into a classroom or school, has appeared too “blunt” in most cases. It would not be unwise to take up contact with OLPC deployments in India and consider fundraising a bit of money to pay an experienced little XO team from that school to involve them, train the teachers of the school you have in mind. Great place to start : http://wiki.laptop.org/go/India
Another little problem: at OLPC, it’s happened quite often that some ill-intentioned people just use the OLPC name to get money to their private bank accounts and run with the money. I would advise to take up contact with OLPC and really team-up with them: let people transfer money directly on OLPC’s account, with a notice “promiseworldwide.org” then they know it’s for your project. OLPC is a registered not for profit. I believe they can offer your sponsors a tax break for their donations. AND with a bit of luck, the XO’s you fundraise can leave with a larger shipment for India, so you’ll save on the shipment costs. And then the people from the school you have in mind can come and pick them up probably somewhere a lot closer to them. That’s minimum 3 arguments to team up with OLPC and 3 more arguments to get even more sponsors for your project. Well done, have fun and … good luck !

Hi Sheryl, well.. that’s gonna be easy!
Did you know there’s already an OLPC XO-XS deployment over there!
Check it out: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Solomon_Islands
So, why not announce you’re going to give a talk about it and you would like to fundraise for taking things to the next step?
Everything starts by TALKING about things… and your big advantage is that there’s already a core team on site and in the USA.
Why not take up contact with them?
OLPC is so inspiring, I’m sure people will come and want to listen to your presentation. And then people will team up etc. just take it one step at a time?

ncarrol: Growing in steps is fine in steps of roughly 100; we don’t currently handle smaller sales. We have worked with NGOs that work with or expand into a few different schools, each of which is small. The NGO might purchase a batch of laptops and distribute them to the independent schools (who might each pay for their share of the total; and might also share support over time).

I hope we also have a channel for individual sales in the future, but we don’t today.

C.J. Smith: that would be roughly $195 per laptop, plus roughly 5% in shipping and other costs, plus local customs. Please see the wiki page and send email to countries@laptop.org for a quote and details.

I have a home office in the last five years or so, I have tested various network setups with the view of creating something larger and more significant. I see some promise in the OLPC project in my community. I have some working knowledge in some Linux distributions like Ubuntu, Open Suse and Fedora. Am currently running a dual boot of xp and Ubuntu. I want to have an expanded wi-fi from my home to my “village”…referred here as ekyalo. We have a five tier governance system that is geo-sensitive by that can serve as great model in my local area here in the caital city of Uganda.
I have worked and shared my IPad with some of the youngsters in my village. I want them to have access to your latest hardware and manage the connections from my home.
The best I can do is buy from Rwanda which seems to be the closest country with a vibrant system. I can start with two and later increase. Because I am self financing, this is the best that I can do. The xo would provide an alternative to a complex life.
Please advise!

Excellent what you’re doing because ACTION IS VIRAL ! It’s about the most inspiring thing you can do … with OLPC XO kind of not for profit stuff, don’t get stuck in planning, on a certain moment break through and go with what you have to insprire / inform other and … since the OLPC initiative is so inspiring, you’ll see other people will want to help out and team up with you. Just take it one step at a time and allow things to develop.
Here’s my contribution for Uganda: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Uganda
🙂 See ? I’m already teaming up with you.
And frankly … if we claim to be the reasonable and at least somewhat intellegent people we are … come on man, if we work on this project every week a couple of hours and talk about it … we owe it to ourselves that in a couple of months we really must have some dynamic started and be able to get the money together for 100 XO’s. I mean it’s not like there’s no rich peope in Uganda and there’s plenty of grant forms for Uganda and education project. Maybe it’s just a matter of calling the local big ngo’s / USaid / Europaid and asking them where the hell these grant forms are and filling them out !

Well that’s a buying signal ! 🙂
Thank you. May I make a suggestion? Can you top it to 6.000 XO’s as that would make just a 40 foot container load? And that would really make sense logistically and save a lot in the costs of getting them wherever you had in mind locally. Shipping companies allow you to keep the container for 6 or 8 days to empty it and bring it back.
Just contact OLPC and they’ll take things up to the next level. If you need further help, just leave us a note at : http://wiki.laptop.org/go/South_Africa

There is one other area I hope you would address: how existing small deployments can grow in small steps. I have before suggestied selling 100 quantities to existing NGO, who might resell in 10 quantities to other existing deployments. Example: I have a deployment of 75 and I have a request to start expanding into a second school, starting with 12.

Carrol, very smart to build upon existing stuff !
The most difficult is to get the first sheep to pass the fence: now you have pictures, you can give real life feedback from the field and be honest tell them what doesn’t work.
Where are you calling from? If you have existing deployments already, is it that hard to get 10 people in your team who can all sign up to fundraise for 10 laptops so you can order 100?
Just start talking about it, show the pics … take it one step at a time, allow others to become enthousiastic, allow others to team up with you and take it up from there: just start TALKING !
And use the http://wiki.laptop.org to coordinate stuff, find others/allow others to find you, etc.